Tell me please: once upon a time was there really such a thing as “Earth Day”? I’ve read about it on the World-Band, but I still cannot believe that a century ago people set aside one day a year to celebrate Mother Earth. They had special festivities in which they did “clean ups” at beaches and parks, and politicians made speeches about how they should enact laws to stop pollution and save the rainforests.
But nothing much happened the rest of the year to help Earth, right? Imagine that: one day a year dedicated to preserving the beauty that Earth once possessed, while the other 364 days were spent destroying it.
Well, that would explain the mess we’re in now. Honestly, I’m embarrassed to be a member of my shortsighted species, Homo sapiens. If my ancestors had faced the frightening, irrevocable choice that I am about to make, would they have paid nature her due and stopped their crimes against the planet?
There must have been signs of the coming apocalypse, right? Scientists like my father must have warned mankind of the increasing risks of widespread pollution. At least, the drastic suffering must have been obvious when rising temperatures caused a spike in cataclysmic hurricanes that wiped out coastal cities and long droughts that ruined farmers and devastated herds of cattle, right? People must have known that greenhouse gases from fossil fuel consumption and deforestation were destroying the ozone layer that kept us safe from the sun’s burning rays, right?
Right!
And yet—I will never understand this—Earth’s inhabitants paid no heed to such dire signs. Instead, they continued on their merry path to destruction with over-consumption of natural resources and outrageous waste. I mean, how could they have destroyed their own habitat?
For Earth’s sake, what I wouldn’t give to experience the things that people in the 21st Century took for granted: clean running tap water, fresh non-engineered vegetables, or amazingly, living above ground with a window looking out at a green world!
Unlike now, when you’re considered a genetic marvel if you live past 45, a century ago, the average expectancy was age 75. Still, mankind must have imagined they would never live to see Earth’s eventual demise. Or else, they were simply the cruelest creatures ever to walk the face of Earth and simply didn’t care what poor living conditions their descendants inherited.
They never thought that, one day, someone like me, Eden Newman, a 17-year-old Caucasian, or Pearl as the epithet goes, would be forced to live underground for fear of catching the Heat. They didn’t know that the majority of light-skinned people would die from overexposure to solar radiation, and the remaining numbers would suffer extreme prejudice from the majority dark-skinned class.
Surely, my ancestors never imagined the choice I now face. Actually, I have no choice. I must adapt or die. If I do not give up my human identity and adapt into a hybrid human-beast, I will die from the Heat…or a broken heart. My mate-to-be Bramford has already adapted into the Jaguar Man. He is the first human to undergo this highly experimental process, and I long to join him. If I fail to adapt, we will never become mates, which would be a fate worse than death.
And so, as frightening as it sounds, I will take on certain traits of great predators that can survive in our overheated environment: the jaguar, the anaconda and the harpy eagle—a perfect combination of skills for land, water and air.
Am I terrified? Of course! Do I despise those selfish people who crippled Mother Earth? You bet.
Eden, the she-cat, that’s who I will become, if I’m lucky. But if fate is unkind, I’ll end up as one of my father’s failed genetic experiments. Eden, the freak.
Like I said, I have no choice but to adapt.
Oh well, hooray for Earth Day.
